Health Care Reform is no longer designed to kill old people. Now, "Obamacare" will mandate free sex change surgery!
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« My critique of Morgan's Aquatic Ape TED talk | Main | The history of fake conservative protests »
More Maddow on Health Care Reform Sabotage
Category: Republicans
Posted on: August 5, 2009 12:27 PM, by Greg Laden
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Comments
What is conspicuously absent from all of these town hall meetings?
The police. The head-cracking dissent-quashing police. If the dissent were genuine, the dissenters would be given a special area two miles away where they could walk in circles and nobody would see them and they'd get no press.
The fact that the police are allowing this disruption shows how depraved they really are. They love their tax-subsidized health care plans and want to keep things as they are.
Posted by: Rose Colored Glasses | August 5, 2009 1:59 PM
Be careful Rose. They are going to take you away in a black helicopter.
Posted by: Andrew | August 5, 2009 2:03 PM
This is how democracy dies.
Posted by: itzac | August 5, 2009 2:20 PM
I should also point out that Rachel Maddow is misrepresenting the complaint. Obviously the complaint isn't about being forced to get a sex change, but being forced to pay for someone else's. I have no problem with paying for gender reassignment through my taxes, and it saddens me that my province has recently delisted the procedure, but this is disingenuous of Maddow. I thought she was better than that.
Posted by: itzac | August 5, 2009 3:07 PM
Rachel went overboard on this - from "mandate" sex change operations to "mandatory" sex-change operations. Bad choice of words. I pretty sure that what was meant by "mandate sex-change operations" means that health insurance will pay for it, mandatory is ridiculous. But then, some wingnuts will interpret it to mean what Rachel actually said - mandatory.
There is some controversy in countries like the UK and Canada as to whether Gender Reassingment Surgery will be paid by the government. AFAIK, the pro-op counseling and hormones are paid, but GRS is one of those things that people have to go through such a big hassle and a long wait that they pay for it themselves.
But, come to think of it, changing the wingnuts to a wings might not be a bad thing.
Posted by: natural cynic | August 5, 2009 3:15 PM
Itzac, she is better than that and she is not misrepresenting anything. She is lampooning the Republicans.
Posted by: Greg Laden | August 5, 2009 3:16 PM
NatCyn: Our comments crossed ... see my response above to Itzac.
It is not really helpful to chastise Maddow for going overboard. She was reporting on the Republicans going overboard. They really did say that if Obama has is way we'll be ordering old people to take end of life injections. They really are using sex change operations and their mandate (in some fuzzy terminology that is not especially understandable) to energize their base and sway fence sitters. Let us please try not to eat our own young at every possible opportunity.
Posted by: Greg Laden | August 5, 2009 3:19 PM
It did seem slightly disingenuous to me at first, but it becomes obvious hyperbole. I mean "they're coming to steal your genitals!!11eleventy" doesn't seem like something anyone would actually say except in jest, does it?
But given the weird ambiguity of the headline she reported on, I think it deserves such mockery.
Posted by: becca | August 5, 2009 4:55 PM
The question is, how do we combat these idiots?
Posted by: Joel | August 5, 2009 5:02 PM
The question is, how do we combat these idiots?
That should be obvious. Hit them where their fear is greatest.
Make them give up their genitals!
Posted by: Greg Laden | August 5, 2009 5:08 PM
Ok, I'll grant the headline is kinda funny. But she does go on to read clarifying lines from the press release before making her hyperbole.
This intimidation that's going on is kinda sapping my sense of humour.
Posted by: Itzac | August 5, 2009 6:25 PM
This intimidation routine is what right-wing authoritarians were born for. Too bad these undereducated, underemployed, overly-religious "regular folk" are so easy for corporate lobbyists to control. Here's the formula for success:
1) Say you love Jesus and guns.
2) Label Democrats pro-choice and anti-firearm.
3) There, you've got em! Now you can tell them Obama is a socialist Antichrist non-citizen. You can tell them to disrupt town halls because old people will be forced to die and sex changes will be "mandated" (a word absent from most of their vocabularies. They'll do whatever you ask and believe whatever you say.
4) Sit back and watch them vote against their own interests while the cash flows in.
This large malfunctioning dark spot in the collective intelligence of the American people is so annoying and disheartening that it wears me out emotionally just thinking about it. I give up! There's no stopping this brand of stupid!
I'm going to put Idiocracy in the DVD player and cry now...
Posted by: Susan Brei | August 6, 2009 1:31 AM